Baggage and luggage handling and transportation has become increasingly important and costly due to increased travel of individuals and groups. In vacation and convention locations, where significant numbers of persons travel in groups, and arrive and leave together, and where a plurality of hotels in a city are used by the group or groups of travelers, efficient baggage handling becomes even more problematic.
In many areas, in order to avoid the multiple handling requirements of taking baggage from a plane, and transferring it to a baggage claim area, where it must then further be handled by the individual traveler, attempts have been made to reduce time and baggage handling costs by picking up luggage destined for one or a few specific hotels directly from the incoming aircraft. This is normally carried out by dispatching a truck to the aircraft, where the baggage destined for a single or selected hotels is placed in the truck, which then travels directly to the destination at which the baggage or luggage is discharged. Obviously, such a process avoids some handling, and is especially convenient for the traveler, who is able to avoid airport baggage claim areas, with the concomitant time delays, inconveniences, tipping, luggage theft, and mixup between bags of individual travelers.
Although the aforesaid process would seem to obviate much of the disadvantages of individual passenger inconveniences, insignificant other problems arise. For example, since the baggage carrying trucks must be driven within close proximity to the aircraft, insurance costs for those vehicles, due to the history of accidents, and even collision with aircraft, have increased dramatically. In addition, where rather large groups of travelers arrive and depart from each hotel, significant delays caused by loading and unloading the luggage from a vehicle are often experienced. Moreover, the requirement of such individual vehicles for each selected hotel greatly increases costs, because of driver and vehicle expenses. Yet, the alternative of dispatching a single truck for multiple hotels, even further increases delays of delivering the baggage from an aircraft to the traveler, with 8 hour handling times not being uncommon in some vacation areas.